Google+ Isn't Dead, It's Resting. We Swear.

Send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for Google+:

Nothing says you’ve fallen out of favor quite like being banished from the most exclusive and uncluttered piece of real estate on the Internet: the Google search homepage. 

It’s been known for some time that Google is at the very least deemphasizing Google+, but perhaps nothing the company has said to date more emphatically confirms this than the recent disappearance of a direct link from Google’s homepage to its long-struggling social media platform, a platform Google originally touted as central to its future.

For its part, Google is still carrying on with the ruse that Google+ is a must-have addition to your online social life. How they can make these kind of announcements with a straight face is beyond me:
"Google Plus is not dead," Bradley Horowitz, who now leads the ersatz social network, told Steven Levy last week ahead of the Google I/O developer conference. "In fact, it's got more signs of life than it's had in some time."

You may recall that the last time you wanted your customers to see something, you took it off your website's home page. Google's announcements on this are very Monty Python:

I don't like to sound happy about Google+'s long fall from grace, but I've spent too many years reading articles and LinkedIn posts telling me how incredibly important Google+ will be any minute now. My reply: "Call me when it starts to matter." And those astronomical user numbers? "Call me when they're activeusers."

I've been calling Google+ Buzz 2 since, well, since Google+ came on the scene. Buzz was Google's previous attempt at breaking into the social media world and it crashed and burned. Then came Google+. I had a colleague who signed off Facebook and Twitter in order to camp in Google+'s brave new world. A year later he was back, unashamedly admitting that Google+ was a lonely place: "No one is there."

For years, Google+ has been a tool that exists almost exclusively for search engine and social media consultants. A new and/or obscure social media platform is a great way for a consultant to squeeze a few extra dollars out of somebody. Be careful whenever you hear someone say you must be using some platform or other. Ask 10 friends if they're using it and see what they say first.

Google's frustration with getting people to use a second Facebook will continue. Let's see what happens next.

Twitter Takes A Beating

As I write this, the beat down on Twitter's stock continues. News like this doesn't help:

Trading in Twitter’s shares was halted late in Tuesday’s session, after the stock plunged 18%, even though the company hadn’t yet announced first-quarter results. Ironically, tweets helped push the shares down. 

After the stock market closed, the company reported that first-quarter sales came in at $435.9 million, which missed Twitter’s guidance of $470 million to $485 million. Twitter’s shares were down again by as much as 6% on Wednesday.

I've always regarded Twitter as a platform of polar extremes. At the one end, a very useful tool for finding stuff written by reporters, business professionals, sports personalities and celebrities. At the other, an ocean of useless, profane, and meaningless messages and spam from nobodies. "Nobodies" is the problem.

Facebook v. Twitter

As a social media platform poised for success, I believe Facebook had - and still has - one important advantage over Twitter: exclusivity. That is, people followed you because you allowed them to follow you, and vice versa. If someone has hundreds of friends, the chances may not be great that they know them all well - some were a prom date from '86, others their mechanic or hair dresser - but the chances are pretty good that they knew them somehow and the person actually exists.

With that in mind, it makes it easier for advertisers to roll the dice on promoting a post using "Your followers and their friends" on Facebook because It's a safe bet that you'll actually reach real people. If my own experience with running Facebook ad campaigns is any indication, this is correct. Advertising on Facebook gets results.

Free-For-All

With Twitter, it's generally a free-for-all and you don't really know who you're talking to. When you see that someone is following 43,000 people and has 43,200 followers in kind, you know it's a joke. Nobody's reading any of that stuff, they're just shooting their own mouths off into the echo chamber. Add to that Twitter's relatively rudimentary advertising platform - Twitter doesn't even come close to Facebook's geographic and demographic targeting capabilities - and you're going to have a problem getting people to cough up money to advertise on Twitter.

LinkedIn, though it isn't discussed much from an advertising standpoint, is in a similar position to Facebook: exclusivity. It boasts pretty good demo information (job, location, education), and it has an interesting advertising niche in that it charges companies to advertise their job postings while at the same time charging users to become "Premium" members so they can look at more stuff pertaining to their careers. So far, so good for LinkedIn, as their earnings have been on a tear. (Update: Hot on the heels of me highlighting LinkedIn's run of success, they're now getting taking a hit in the stock market, as well, after not meeting analyst's expectations for the first quarter of 2015).

Twitter has none of the juice that exclusivity brings. It's a wide open playing field and it's likely too late to go back and change that now.

Twitter Is Still Valuable

It's not all doom and gloom. I wrote last year that Twitter is a great resource when used actively and not passively. I still believe Twitter is most useful when reaching out and connecting to individuals using the @ symbol, as opposed to broadcasting generic messages which relatively few people will actually see. Using Twitter in this way has helped me and the businesses I work with.

Will Twitter be able to get their financial house in order and avoid an implosion? Time will tell. I hope so. It has become such a part of the communication realm's fabric that it's hard to see how it could all come crashing down. But then, if you had told me in the mid-'90s that Newsweek would one day sell for a dollar, I never would have believed it. Never say never.

Why You Should Write A Blog

I would like to distill what I believe to be the most important reason for blogging into one photograph.

Below is a photo of a person with whom I help to produce a blog. Six months ago, he wasn't blogging. Now he is.

This photo shows him being interviewed yesterday by CBC News, one of Canada's largest broadcasters. This is the second time the CBC has asked him to appear. He credits his blog posts with getting him discovered as an expert source.

Blogging gives you and your expertise exposure. If you're not blogging, start now.

Boosting Posts On Facebook

I recently read a post that said whenever you post something to your Facebook business page, all of your followers will see the post.

It would be great if this were the case, but alas, Facebook has to eat, too.

Remember that your Facebook business page updates will never be organically seen by all of your followers. Only a small percentage of followers will actually see the updates.

For one thing, not all of your followers will be online to see the posts. For another, Facebook isn't going to serve your posts to all of your followers out of the goodness of their hearts. To remedy this, you must pay to "boost" posts to get them in front of more followers.

Take a look at the screen grab above, which is an example of a post after it was boosted for a day. That particular Facebook page had around 4000 followers at the time. At a low cost of $6, that specific post reached over 25% of the page's followers, two thirds of those through boosting.

How Much Does Boosting Cost?

Boosting a post isn't necessarily expensive. You can do it for as low as a few dollars, all the way up to several thousand. For small businesses, it is a very cheap and effective way to raise brand awareness.

You can also specify whether you want the post boosted to your followers, your followers and their friends, or to the Facebook community at large with some demographic parameters set like gender, age, and location. Personally, I find it more effective to boost the post to the people that are already following your page. They will be more receptive to engaging with the post because they're already interested in what you have to say. Save the "at large" dollars for advertisements that will generate more Facebook followers in general.

Don't Go Crazy

Don't boost a post every day. Save boosting for posts that you think will generate a lot of interest and activity, whether that be a comment on the post itself, or a phone call to purchase something you're offering.

Whatever the case, pick your shots so you're not spamming people's timelines with sponsored posts. They may drop your page altogether.

Copying Something? Give Credit

I once read a post where someone mentioned at the end of it that they had "borrowed" the preceding paragraphs from another blog. No link or author's name attached. Just the declaration that hey, I borrowed those paragraphs you just read.

Sometimes when I read something, everything is fine until I reach a jarring paragraph. Then I think, "This doesn't sound like their voice." Sure enough, a copy + paste + search turns up something from the New York Times.

If You Copy, Give Credit

For the record: you can copy a couple of paragraphs, provided you give attribution. Online, you should provide the link. Example:

I can't believe how much snow there is in Buffalo today. According to forecasters, it's going to get pretty bad:

A new blast of lake-effect snow began pounding Buffalo on Thursday, piling more misery on a city already buried by an epic, deadly snowfall that could leave some areas with nearly two-and-a-half metres of snow on the ground when it's all done.

If your work wasn't written for online consumption, then you should explicitly say where a quotation came from.

Some people are sticklers about footnotes and end notes, but what's important is that you tell people where you got it: author, publication, date.

No Whole Hog

Note that you can't copy a person's entire work without permission, even if you do give attribution. Instead, you can quote a couple of paragraphs and provide a link so people can read the rest there.

As for the post I read where the person finally, after 400 words or so, got around to saying they didn't write any of it yet didn't say who did, that's about as close to the line as you can get, if not stepping right over it.

Lies And Consequences

Some of the time, it won't matter. Someone like me will just get their nose out of joint about it. Other times it will matter a great deal, though if you're a well known scribe, people may be willing to overlook the transgressions without canning your outright:

Laura Parker was fired from The Post in 1991 for lifting quotes from the Associated Press and Miami Herald. Denver Post columnist Ken Hamblin, meanwhile, was suspended for two months in 1994 after he copied five paragraphs from a Rocky Mountain News report. “The sin itself carries neither public humiliation nor the mark of Cain,” CJR’s Trudy Lieberman wrote. “Some editors will keep a plagiarist on staff or will knowingly hire one if talent outweighs the infraction.”

Perhaps. But they shouldn't. And you shouldn't be chancing it, anyway.

How To Find Good Content Ideas In 5 Seconds

You've probably been told that you need to blog and post to your social media pages more often. (If you're a friend or colleague of mine, then you've definitely been told this at least once; hopefully I shut up for a little while after that one time and let you get back to your drink).

One thing I hear as an excuse not to post is that a person doesn't have any ideas. They have writer's block, or they don't know where to get a new idea.

Writer's Block Doesn't Exist

First, writer's block doesn't exist. If you have nothing to write about, it's because you haven't done your homework in a while. Screenwriting teacher Robert McKee says that "writer's block" is cured by a quick trip to the library. Solid point, but no need for that. Just flip on your computer and your writer's block shall be cured (unless your "writer's block" is just laziness in costume, in which case no one can help you).

Do Some Homework

Here's how to get a blog post or update onto your pages today. Let's say you're a palaeontologist and you need something to blog or comment upon. Here's the steps:

• Go to Google
• Search for something in your field. Like "dinosaur bones"
• Click on the News tab at the top of the screen
• Look at the fresh stories in your field
• Pick one that interests you
• Write about it. Agree, disagree, whichever. But reference the story and write about it, whether it be a lengthy blog post, or a quick comment on your social pages. Just make sure you reference the piece and provide the link.

Show Your Followers You've Got Game

Done. You learned something in your field today, showed your followers that your head is in the game, and you've sharpened your writing and social media skills. Keep going.

Enough whining. Social media is there to help you. Use it.

Yes, yes, I know you've been reading a lot of stories in the past few months about what a joy it is when people "unplug" from Facebook in particular or social media in general. Leave those people to the newfound anonymity they crave - except on LinkedIn, where they can't wait to weep about social media being bogus....even while they use LinkedIn.

In the meantime, go ahead and reap the benefits of having a number of cheap tools for you to use in your quest to highlight your expertise and your accomplishments and hence further your career.

Get Involved. Get Known.

Yesterday, I was reading a news story which I knew a client of mine would find interesting. I sent it to him for comment and he responded a few minutes later. I tailored the response and put the comment on the news article. Then I went looking for the reporter's social feeds, so the reporter would be sure to see the comment and know that someone was interested in their stuff. This would help the reporter by flagging a future expert source if they needed one, and it would help my client by giving them a chance to be recognized by someone in the press.

Make Contact. Communicate.

A few minutes after posting the Tweet, the reporter got in touch and wanted to talk to the client for a few minutes. A phone call was made and the two of them had a ten minute interview. The reporter now had 1) a source for a new story and 2) an expert they could call on for future stories on the same subject. Meanwhile, my client was getting exposure in the mainstream press which could be turned into social media exposure by sharing the story when it came out. This would then add burnish to his expert halo and help him make more money from clients of his own.

None of this came through whining about Facebook and Twitter intruding on our lives, nor did it come from misery seeking company on LinkedIn and throwing in the towel on social media. It came from using these tools to do what they do: allow you to easily find people and talk to them.